For the past few months, I've been trying to piece together what Microsoft codename "Menlo" is. My tipsters described it as a project by Microsoft Researchers to investigate new operating system possibilities in the mobile space.

I mentioned in my original blog post a few of the other Microsoft researchers working on Menlo. The new paper on Greenfield/Menlo lists some others, including a couple of user-interface specialists and senosr researchers. Amy Karlson, who is listed as one of the authors of the paper, also is working on Microsoft Research's "Courier." (No, no the cancelled dual-screen Courier; the Courier phone-based file exchange system that is one of the projects of MSR's Cross-Device User Experience team. This team is focused on understanding how to make PC-phone experiences more seamless.)

So what to make of all this? I don't think Microsoft is going to build its own Menlo phone. (Been there, done that with the failed Kin.) I do think the Menlo team is continuing to focus on a new mobile operating system -- not just the existing Windows Embedded Compact-based ones -- that will work on a variety of processors.